There is a document library which has over 5000 items, it has passed its item view threshold. The view was reduced to show items that met certain requirements. This view now shows less than 1000 records.

When some users use the the column name to filter they receive a message "Cannot show the value of the filter. The field may not be filterable, or the number of items returned exceeds the list view threshold enforced by the administrator."

The threshold item view limit is in the Central Administration but this is not something that we want to change because of performance reasons, so this would be a last option for this. Some of the columns the view is filtered by are indexed, as this was a suggestion.

The way I see it is that it should be working properly. The view is within the threshold limit so it should not have an issue. All users were able to use it properly before it reached 5000 items. This error shows for some users but not all.

Is there something else that should be done to allow all users to have access to filter the view by using the column name?

UPDATE: The list view currently has 3 filters on one column. The column is a choice and is indexed.

The filters are as follows:

column1(Indexed) is equal to value1

Or

column1(Indexed) is equal to value2

Or

column1(Indexed) is equal to value3

When I remove one of the filters it works fine, it does not matter which of the filters I remove.
Filter_1 return 2880 items, Filter_2 return 17 items, and Filter_3 returns 97 items. For a total of 2994 items returned.

Would there be a restriction on having multiple "Or" filter statements on the column?

3 Answers
3

I've had my woes with the list view threshold being reached. Good call first off on not increasing the threshold. The best advice I have is to review the below article, which toward the bottom has tips on how to handle large lists/libraries while avoiding increasing the threshold. It explains in better detail what I'd like to tell you.

The link was helpful. It was something I had looked into before as well. I had applied these changes to the document library. The issue I am facing has to do with some of the users who continue to receive the error message.
– caspFeb 24 '15 at 16:55

The problem stems from the list view web part itself, and the way it tries to retrieve all possible filter values for the column, which causes it to bump up against the list view threshold even when your view is able to circumvent it.

One alternative is to use metadata navigation, which adds specified filtering options to the quick launch. Of course, this only works for certain types of fields.

Another alternative is to provide your own filtering mechanism to the users. You can apply filtering to any list view web part by including some query string parameters in the URL.

To filter on a specific value, append the following to your URL:

?FilterField1=InternalNameOfColumn&FilterValue1=TextToFilterAgainst

You can also perform wildcard filtering against most types of columns using the following format: